Read Online By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Roberto Bolaño
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say to the wizened youth, although I can no longer see him, although I no longer know if he is behind me or off to the side or lost in the mangrove swamps that line the river. I never made a secret of it. Everyone knew.
Everyone in Chile knew. You must be the only person who didn’t, or you’re pretending to be more of a dimwit than you are. Silence. The wizened youth does not reply. In the distance I can hear what sounds like a gang of primates chattering away, all at once, in a state of high excitement, and then I take one hand out from under the blankets and put it in the water and laboriously steer the bed around, using my hand as an oar, moving my four fingers together like a punkah, and when the bed has turned around, all I can see is the jungle and the river and its tributaries and the sky, no longer gray but luminous blue, and two very small, very distant clouds scudding like children swept along by the wind.
The chattering of the monkeys has died away. What a relief. What silence. What peace. A peace that summons the memory of other blue skies, other diminutive clouds scudding eastwards before the wind, and how they filled my spirit with boredom. Yellow streets and blue skies. As one approached the center of the city, the streets gradually lost that awful yellow color and turned into neat, gray, steely streets, although I knew that the slightest scratch would reveal yellow under the gray. And that filled my soul not only with lassitude but also with boredom, or maybe the lassitude began to turn into boredom, heaven knows, in any case there came a time of yellow streets and luminous blue skies and deep boredom, during which my poetic activity ceased, or rather my poetic activity underwent a dangerous mutation, since I did not actually stop putting pen to paper, but the poems were full of insults and blasphemy and worse, and I had the good sense to destroy them as soon as the sun came up the next day, without showing them to anyone, although at the time many would have considered it an honor to see them, poems whose deep meaning, or at least the meaning I thought I glimpsed in their depths, left me in a state of perplexity and anguish that lasted all day long. And this state of perplexity and anguish was accompanied by a state of boredom and exhaustion. Monumental boredom and exhaustion. The perplexity and the anguish were small by comparison, and lived encrusted in some cranny of the general state of boredom and exhaustion. Like a wound within a wound. And then I stopped giving classes. I stopped saying mass. I stopped reading the newspaper each morning and discussing the news with my brothers in Christ. My book reviews became muddled (although I did not stop writing them).
Several poets came to see me and asked what was wrong. Several priests came to see me and asked what was troubling my spirit. I went to confession and prayed.
But the rings under my eyes gave me away. And indeed at the time I was getting very little sleep, sometimes three hours, sometimes two. In the mornings I would walk from the rectory to the vacant lots, from the vacant lots to the
shantytowns, from the shantytowns back to the center of Santiago. One afternoon two thugs attacked me. I swear I have no money, lads, I said to them. Don’t you now, Father Ass`hole, replied the muggers. I ended up handing over my wallet and praying for them, but not much. My boredom had taken on a fierce intensity. And my exhaustion had grown in proportion. From that day on, however, I changed the route of my daily walk. I chose less dangerous parts of town, I chose parts of town from which I could contemplate the magnificence of the Cordillera, this was when it was still possible to see the Cordillera at any time of year, before it was hidden by a blanket of smog. I wandered and wandered and sometimes I caught a bus and went on wandering with my head against the window and sometimes I took a taxi and went on wandering through the abominable yellow and the
Everyone in Chile knew. You must be the only person who didn’t, or you’re pretending to be more of a dimwit than you are. Silence. The wizened youth does not reply. In the distance I can hear what sounds like a gang of primates chattering away, all at once, in a state of high excitement, and then I take one hand out from under the blankets and put it in the water and laboriously steer the bed around, using my hand as an oar, moving my four fingers together like a punkah, and when the bed has turned around, all I can see is the jungle and the river and its tributaries and the sky, no longer gray but luminous blue, and two very small, very distant clouds scudding like children swept along by the wind.
The chattering of the monkeys has died away. What a relief. What silence. What peace. A peace that summons the memory of other blue skies, other diminutive clouds scudding eastwards before the wind, and how they filled my spirit with boredom. Yellow streets and blue skies. As one approached the center of the city, the streets gradually lost that awful yellow color and turned into neat, gray, steely streets, although I knew that the slightest scratch would reveal yellow under the gray. And that filled my soul not only with lassitude but also with boredom, or maybe the lassitude began to turn into boredom, heaven knows, in any case there came a time of yellow streets and luminous blue skies and deep boredom, during which my poetic activity ceased, or rather my poetic activity underwent a dangerous mutation, since I did not actually stop putting pen to paper, but the poems were full of insults and blasphemy and worse, and I had the good sense to destroy them as soon as the sun came up the next day, without showing them to anyone, although at the time many would have considered it an honor to see them, poems whose deep meaning, or at least the meaning I thought I glimpsed in their depths, left me in a state of perplexity and anguish that lasted all day long. And this state of perplexity and anguish was accompanied by a state of boredom and exhaustion. Monumental boredom and exhaustion. The perplexity and the anguish were small by comparison, and lived encrusted in some cranny of the general state of boredom and exhaustion. Like a wound within a wound. And then I stopped giving classes. I stopped saying mass. I stopped reading the newspaper each morning and discussing the news with my brothers in Christ. My book reviews became muddled (although I did not stop writing them).
Several poets came to see me and asked what was wrong. Several priests came to see me and asked what was troubling my spirit. I went to confession and prayed.
But the rings under my eyes gave me away. And indeed at the time I was getting very little sleep, sometimes three hours, sometimes two. In the mornings I would walk from the rectory to the vacant lots, from the vacant lots to the
shantytowns, from the shantytowns back to the center of Santiago. One afternoon two thugs attacked me. I swear I have no money, lads, I said to them. Don’t you now, Father Ass`hole, replied the muggers. I ended up handing over my wallet and praying for them, but not much. My boredom had taken on a fierce intensity. And my exhaustion had grown in proportion. From that day on, however, I changed the route of my daily walk. I chose less dangerous parts of town, I chose parts of town from which I could contemplate the magnificence of the Cordillera, this was when it was still possible to see the Cordillera at any time of year, before it was hidden by a blanket of smog. I wandered and wandered and sometimes I caught a bus and went on wandering with my head against the window and sometimes I took a taxi and went on wandering through the abominable yellow and the
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